THE head of Queensland’s flood appeal says donations are so low they won’t go anywhere near helping those who have lost all their possessions. Terry Mackenroth said only $6 million had been raised, including $1 million each from the state and federal governments. ”For the amount of devastation I’ve seen just through watching television, it is not going to go anywhere near paying the sorts of claims we will receive,” he said. ”When someone’s house has been flooded, they probably don’t even have a toothbrush. They’ve lost everything.”

25 thoughts on “Video: Climate change and the Queensland floods”

“If a reading of the published scientific literature paints such a frightening picture of the future asSix Degrees suggests – even while it honestly represents that literature – then are we being too provocative in the way we write our scientific papers? Or are we being too cautious in the way we talk about the implications of the results?”

If you build your house in a flood prone area then sometimes it will get flooded. Some of the worst floods occurred in the 1970s, and there are records of severe floods in Australia stretching back to the first colonisation.

Interestingly the floods could be the straw which breaks your hold on Australia. The botched desal plants are a sore point for many people. People who previously accepted the climate alarmist lie are having a lot of trouble swallowing the assertion that the CSIRO predicted endless drought (requiring desal plants) and extreme flooding, at the same time. After this debacle, won’t take much of a push to turn Australia into a country of “deniers”.

Inappropriate development is in issue, of course. And yes – Australia is a land of extremes. But they are coming with more frequency and intensity. No one in the scientific community denies floods happened in the past. Bundabergy and the surrounding region have just had two years of devestating floods and record breaking rain.

When what were considered 1-100 year events happen every year, one has to aks “What is going on?”.

The Tugun Desal plant was the brainchild of the goldcoast mayor Ron Clarke in 2005, he pushed for it and it was Beattie, the premier at the time who entered into a deal with clarke to build the plant. Their local dam was also heightened by 15 metres

The Tuun plant was a godsend during the brisbane floods under the Bligh government when the filtration plants could not deal with the amount of dirt and debris, it kept the fresh water supply up to the levels required.

It was again brought into 100% capacity only a week ago when the filtration plants again suffered from the dirt and debris due to the flood.

Without desalination Perth would now be suffering from a lack of drinkg water,

The record rainfall that created the inland tsunami was a projection from a 2006 CSIRO paper for exactly that locality, it’s only shortcoming was the predictions were not expected to happen for decades,

Given there has been no global warming since 1998, its a little far fetched to link am extreme weather event with human induced climate change. Even alarmists hesitate to put their reputation on the line by suggesting such a link – the connection if any is too tenuous to prove. http://www.nature.com/news/extreme-weather-1.11428

Since the British MET office is predicting no global warming for at least another 4 years. If they are right, this will make 20 years without any warming, despite us dumping an enormous quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere.

So the suggestion that we have a meaningful influence on the climate is also rapidly becoming untenable.

IT IS OBVIOUS that Andrew Powell the current minister overseeing the climate change portfolio does not wish to give his reasons for rejecting the science of the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect, now established for over a century.

The Bligh government was focused on both mitigation and adaptation to the threat of global warming. On taking office the LNP Newman government dismantled the mitigation strategies to concentrate solely on adaptation.
The reason cited, was because state mitigation would only be a duplication of the commonwealth carbon price strategy which would suffice for Queensland mitigation. Given that the LNP government in Queensland fully backs the removal of the carbon price by the likely incoming Abbott led coalition government, then we must ask what plans have the Queensland government made to reintroduce a climate change mitigation strategy post September 2013 ?

The DERM adaptation issues paper does not seem to have been updated to reflect the emerging research regarding sea level rise nor the predicted tropical wet bulb temperatures possible over the coming decades. Without global mitigation strategies, adaptation will in effect mean abandonment of sea- side and tropical communities. The worst case scenarios for 2100 project a sea level rise of 2 metres, and seasonal wet bulb temperatures above the limit of human survival within the tropics. What then are the 2100 projections that Mr Powell has chosen for future adaptation planning?

I wonder how many years of repeated cycling between AGW-exaggerated drought and flood our economy can sustain before farmers simply cannot be subsidised to grow in the (large areas of) marginal country, and coastal/riverine communities cannot be rebuilt?

Many areas had just cut the ribbon on post Cyclone Larry repairs, and now they’re having to do it all over again.

A smart society would fix the root cause, rather than continually mop up after it…